Keep still in my horizon; for to me These are my drowsy days; in vain Oh! come that hour when I shall never Edmund Waller. Waller (1605-1687) flourished under the rule of Charles I. and Charles II. His mother was aunt of the celebrated John Hampden, who was first cousin both of Edmund Waller and Oliver Cromwell. Rich an well-born, Waller was educated at Eton, and became a member of Parliament at eighteen. His political life was eventful, and not wholly to his credit. He sat in all the parliaments of Charles II., and was the delight of the House: even at eighty years of age he was the liveliest and wittiest man within its walls. His verses are smooth and polished, but superficial. Overpraised in his day, his fame has, not undeservedly, declined. He was left heir to an estate of £3500 in his infancy, and was either a Roundhead or a Royalist, as the time served. At twenty-five he married a rich heiress of London, who died the same year. Easy and witty, he was yet cold and selfish. Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of Beauty from the light retired: Suffer herself to be desired, Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare How small a part of time they share ON A GIRDLE. That which her slender waist confined It was my heaven's extremest sphere, The pale which held that lovely deer; My joy, my grief, my hope, my love, Did all within this circle move. A narrow compass, and yet there William Habington. Habington (1605-1645) was a Roman Catholic. He was educated at St. Omer's and Paris, and after his return to England married the lady who is the "Castara" of his volume of poems. He had no stormy passions to agitate him, no unruly imagination to control. His verses are often of a placid, tender, elegant description, but studded with conceits. Ye glorious wonders of the skies! Shine still, bright stars, The Almighty's mystic characters! I'd not your beauteous lights surprise To illuminate a woman's eyes. Nor to perfume her veins will I The purple of the violet: The untouched flowers may grow and die Safe from my fancy's injury. Open my lips, great God! and then I'll soar above The humble flight of carnal love: Upward to thee I'll force my pen, And trace no paths of vulgar men. For what can our uubounded souls Their object find, excepting thee? Should I myself ingratiate To a prince's smile, How soon may death my hopes beguile! And should I farm the proudest state, I'm tenant to uncertain fate. If I court gold, will it not rust? And if my love Toward a female beauty move, How will that surfeit of our lust Distaste us when resolved to dust! But thou, eternal banquet! where May feed without satiety! Who harmony art to the ear, Who art, while all things else appear! While up to thee I shoot my flame, Thou dost dispense A holy death, that murders sense, And makes me scorn all pomps that aim At other triumphs than thy name. It crowns me with a victory So heavenly, all That's earth from me away doth fall: And I, from my corruption free, Grow in my vows even part of thee. John Milton. Milton (1608-1674) was the younger son of a London scrivener in good circumstances. At sixteen he entered Christ's College, Cambridge; taking his degree of M.A. in 1632, about which time he wrote "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas," and other of his shorter poems. Afterward he travelled in Italy for some fifteen months, and visited blind old Galileo. Returning to England, he kept school for awhile. He strongly advocated the Republican cause, and, on the death of Charles I., was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State. At the Restoration he retired into private life; and it was then, in his old age, when he had become totally blind, that he wrote his immortal poems, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." Milton was married three times-first, in 1643, to Mary Powell. It was a hasty marriage, and an unhappy one. Six years after her death he was united to Catherine Woodcock, with whom he lived happily for a year, when, to his great grief, she died. It is of her he speaks in one of his sonnets as "his late espoused saint." In 1660 he married Elizabeth Minshull, who proved an excellent wife. Milton's English sonnets, seventeen in number, are happily described by Wordsworth as "soulanimating strains, alas! too few." Johnson, however, could not see their grandeur, and explained what he considered Milton's "failure" by remarking to Hannah More, "Milton's was a genius that could hew a Colossus out of a rock, but could not carve heads on cherrystones." In his youth Milton was remarkable for his beauty of countenance. His life was the pattern of simplicity and purity, almost to austerity. He acted from his youth as "under his great Taskmaster's eye." Milton's two juvenile poems, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," hardly deserve the reputation they have long held. He evidently took his hints for them partly from a forgotten pocm prefixed to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," and partly from the song, by Beaumont and Fletcher, "Hence, all you vain delights!" (which see). The poem in Burton's book has these lines: "When I go musing all alone, Thinking of diverse things foreknown; When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow, void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, All my joys to this are folly; Naught so sweet as Melancholy!" The remainder of the poem is still more suggestive of resemblance, both in the measure and the general tone. The following tribute to the nobility of Milton's character is paid by Macaulay: "If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience." The fame of this eminent poet seems to have been undisturbed by the lapse of time. L'ALLEGRO.1 Hence, loathéd Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born! In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 2 But come, thou goddess, fair and free, The frolic wind that breathes the spring, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Through the sweet-brier, or the vine, While the cock, with lively din, Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures: Russet lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; To the tanned hay-cock in the mead, 1 Warton says: "Sweetbrier and eglantine are the same plant by the 'twisted eglantine' he therefore means the honeysuckle." 2 A sort of fiddle. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday, Till the livelong daylight fail;— She was pinched and pulled, she said, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold To win her grace whom all commend. In saffron robe, with taper clear, And ever against eating cares, Such as the meeting soul may pierce; Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice. These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live. IL PENSEROSO.1 Hence, vain, deluding joys, The brood of folly, without father bred! How little you bestead, Or fill the fixéd mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, 1 A fold or twist. 1 The melancholy man. 2 A thin transparent texture. |